Conventionally, small office devices or household devices usually called tape or label printers capable of easily printing characters on a tape-like printing medium are commercially available. In such tape printer, after characters are printed though a predetermined length on the tape-like printing medium, the printed tape portion is cut by a tape cutter from the remaining tape and then used. In that case, many tape cutters used are inexpensive and arranged so as to manually operate a cut lever or button to operate a pair of scissors or cutter blades.
One automatically cutting device for such printed medium has a pin slidably placed in a groove provided on an outer peripheral surface of a cylindrical cam and engaged with an opposite side of a cutter blade from its edge so that when the cylindrical cam is rotated, the cutter blade is actuated to cut a printed medium.
In a cutting device such as the aforementioned manually cutting device in which an operating member (cut lever or cut button) connected to a pair of scissors (or a cut blade) is pushed down to cut a printed tape or medium fed out from a tape printer (hereinafter referred to as a "printer" simply), an attendant for the printer is required in printing. Thus, there is dissatisfaction that the attendant cannot do any other business or work. The attendant manually cuts the printed tape at an end of each printing operation, so that when the attendant successively forms the printed tape portions, a lot of trouble and time is taken unsatisfactorily.
In a printer such as the above-mentioned automatically cutting device in which a pair of scissors is operated by a cylindrical cam to cut a printed tape, a rechargeable cell is used in many cases as a power supply to give portability to the printer. In that case, when the cell is dead, a time for recharging the cell is required. Alternatively, to get power through an AC adapter, the user is required to move to the position of a receptacle for a home power source or extend a code to the receptacle to thereby ensure a power supply, which is, however, inconvenient because a makeshift to deal with an emergency cannot be devised.
Not only when a printer is used frequently, but also when the printer is left for a long time in an unused state, for example, within a desk, the output of the cell will drop below a usable level to thereby cause a problem of running out of the cell as in the case of its frequent use.